mirror, mirror

[leeseokmin]

it's been two? three? days since i unpacked my ships as quotes, but it might have also been less than that—time hasn't felt real for a while now. i decided to hop on the "unpack your playlist" trend that capricornia started. my playlist is a combination of songs i see as reflections of me, songs i loop on bad days and just songs i generally like, be it instrumentally or lyrically. due to privacy reasons (my real name & facebook are linked to my spotify account) i won't be sharing a link to the playlist but in no particular order: mirror, mirror

1. John My Beloved — Sufjan Stevens
   • i am a man with a heart that offends/with its lonely and greedy demands
   • all sufjan music strikes a chord within me that just has me living outside my own mind, but john my beloved does this the most. this one is just a song i reach for on a bad day and hold onto like a talisman
2. June — Florence & the Machine
   • in those heavy days in june/when love became an act of defiance
   • florence, like hozier, marina, sufjan and lorde, is just a musician core to me. june is just a brilliant pick me up on a bad day song and just.... ethereal in the way it transports you into a coccoon of childhood memories 
3. Susie Save Your Love — Allie X ft. Mitski
   • save your love for someone like me/you don't have to be a part-time/susie, save your love, and take mine from me/you don't have to be a part-time, save your love
   • for most of high school, i was in love with my best friend who kept dating men i just hated. the whole time i would think about the ways i cared for her more than them and when this song came out i just lost my mind; it's in my top100 of 2020, which is sooo humiliating. i think it's a pretty accurate reflection of the more... overwhelming? way i can love someone 
4. Ale Ale — A.R. Rahman
   • has all the sand today become sugar/has the sea become freshwater/is the shore covered in your footsteps/is your smile reflected off the waves?
   • IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED BOYS (2003) YOU HAVE TO WATCH BOYS (2003). no tamil movie has come remotely close to the anguish this one put me through, it's overwhelming. it has found family, pursuing arts, forbidden love, all of it. it has one of the greatest soundtracks of all time courtesy of a.r. rahman too, and i just love the plain sweetness of this song, it's very much a dia devotion track
5. Tian Di — Kris Wu
   • people from all around said i wouldn't make it/our forefathers said that distance tests a horse's stamina/walk with me, break through heaven and earth with me/i've never accepted my fate
   • kris wu... is quite possibly the reason i'm very much into kpop still. i think i was at a turning point when exo debuted in 2012 but i stayed on because of him and despite all the heartbreak of him leaving exo caused me, his solo career coming together has been an absolute reward. tian di is a song i hold onto to guide me & falls into songs that are reflections of me. i hate being told i cannot do something and everything i've achieved in life so far has been out of spite & defiance, much like this song & his solo career.
6. Space — SEVENTEEN
   • feels like I’m floating in space/i don’t know where to go/but the stars far away pull me
   • if there's one seventeen song that just rings in me every time it's this one... iykyk.
7. Too Much — Carly Rae Jepsen
   
   • [INSERT ENTIRE CHORUS HERE] when i feel it, then i feel it too much//cause if i love you, then i love you too much
   • lol. if there is a single song on this playlist that's truly a reflection of me, this would be it. i once had an ex describe me as too much, and that being in a relationship with me became overwhelming fast because no one can match the ferocity in which i love... i spents 2 years traumatized by it both in friendships & relationships and only made progress in the last year or so with it; i just think loving people fiercely is neat, actually! 
8. Die 4 Ur Love — Tei Shi
   • was it all a dream of mine?/everything we left behind/if i can't have you/what's the point of all this?/i'm broken in two, apocalypse
   • andrea put me on tei shi, and i just loooove this song. i love the idea of love carrying on beyond death in general, part of the reason i love the idea of the ghost drift & i think this song is very much about a dead love in some ways
9. Symptoms — SHINee
   • i cannot pick a lyric i love from this because all of symptoms has 1) endless lyricality and 2) endless replayability. there is no song in the world like this one, except maybe all day, all night or just, like, shinee's entire discography 
10. Greetings from Califournia — The Neighbourhood
    
    • GODS. the neighbourhood are, and will always be, my problematic faves. wiped out stays one of my fave albums of all time purely because of the integration of waves crashing into the instrumentals. this is a song i love for no specific reason, but also because i am, unfortunately, in love with the double edged sword of california 
11. Comme Des Garcons (Like the Boys) — Rina Sawayama ft Pabllo Vittar
    
    • hot like a fever, make you a believer/write my name up in the sky from paris to shibuya/elevate your vision when you put me on the cover
    • i'm horribly fond of... girlboss lyrics? or at least feminine confidence, which is something rina always hits out of the of the park. this song in particular is very much a pregaming dia does makeup staple and never fails to perk me right up; i hear it and i have to slut drop 
12. The Bay — Metronomy
    • this is a song like greetings from califournia to me, that's purely here for #vibes & #instrumentals. sometimes you've just spent 2 years in san francisco building a life and the bay just feels so good! 
13. Obsessions — Marina
    • sunday, wake up, give me a cigarette/last night's love affair is looking vulnerable in my bed
    • there's this one tumblr post floating around that's like listening to electra heart when i was 14 made me evil except mine is listening to the family jewels at 12 made me evil. when i tell you i've been a marina stan for her entire career, i mean it. obssessions just falls into the pile marina songs that are perfect to me, i love the ambigious relationship vibe of it all! 
14. Youth — Glass Animals
    • boy, i want you to be happy/free to run, get dizzy on caffeine/funny friends that make you laugh/and maybe you're just a little bit dapper
    • in 2017, my high school friend group and i took a midnight drive to the nearest beachtown, where we got drunk on a beach and yelled. one of the songs we played that night was this and listening to it always takes me back to that moment, transporting me back to that moment. it's a song i reach out for when i feel alone
15. NFWMB — Hozier 
    • give your heart and soul to charity/cause the rest of you/the best of you/honey, belongs to me
    • i don't know where to begin with the sheer level of unhingeness this song inspires in me. i think, in narrative, the idea of love as a corrupting force is very dear to me, of the protagonist being in love with someone who would otherwise be a villain if not because they are in love with the protagonist. this is one of those songs, and yeats' second coming, which it draws inspiration from, is also wickedly beautiful 

Comments

[latespring]

ohhh i love this!! it feels very you, which ik is the point, but in the particular frame of music. the link between die 4 ur love and the ghost drift has sniped me from space?? it was really nice to see the overlap in our music tastes, ty for sharing!

[capricornia]

This is so cool to read! I’m so glad you shared this! I only know a few of the songs on here (Susie Save Your Love, Space, Too Much, NFWMB) but I was bonked over the head with some of these lyrics, so I’m going to check out the rest! I love that you wrote about your personal connections to the songs!